The present invention relates to mobile telecommunications systems in general, and more particularly to systems that have the ability to deliver advertisements to mobile units and determine a geographically precise location of mobile units in the mobile telecommunications system.
Mobile telecommunication units (MUs) such as cell phones and other related devices have become a pervasive part of our culture. Historically, MUs have typically been treated as a movable version of a standard telephone. In particular, a main objective of current systems has been to hide the fact that the user of the MU is in fact mobile by providing a standard telephone number for reaching the MU regardless of location. Thus, MUs are typically used in a manner so as to conceal the location of the mobile user to make it appear to the outside world that the unit is a traditional stationary unit (SU). Similarly, when telecommunication system users (users) place phone calls using MUs, they dial traditional telephone numbers as if they were in their home location, making call placement appear to users of MUs as if they were in their home cities, regardless of their actual location.
The approximate location of an MU is always known to the telecommunication infrastructure in the form of which cell base station the MU is communicating with (e.g., as taught in U.S. Pat. No. 6,061,561). A prime motivation for being able to access such information is to determine the location of MU users who place calls to Emergency-911 call centers or are otherwise in distress. In order to improve the effectiveness of Emergency-911 services in particular, more accurate position information is being made available via the telecommunication infrastructure. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 6,067,045 teaches the use of combining Global Positioning System (GPS) information with a telecommunication infrastructure to accurately determine the position of an MU, whereas U.S. Pat. No. 6,055,434 teaches the use of low powered beacons scattered throughout MU usage areas. But, regardless of the technology used, the end result is that telecommunication systems are rapidly being provided with an ability to accurately determine the geographic location of an individual MU. The advent of precise location information for MUs has made possible new services dependent on a known location of a MU.
For instance, presently no one provides a service of sending advertising messages or coupons to mobile units based on the MU""s location and further analyzing the effectiveness of the sent advertisement. While this has previously been done with respect to traditional telemarketing calls to a stationary telephone, such as in a person""s home, it has previously been impossible to do with respect to MUs. In traditional telemarketing, effectiveness is determined by whether a customer places an order during the course of the traditional telephone call. However, most mobile users prefer not to receive voice telemarketing calls on their mobile telephones, as this consumes the user""s allotted minutes, may cost the user money in usage fees, and in general interrupts the user in whatever he or she is doing. Thus, voice telemarketing calls are typically not placed to numbers known to belong to mobile telephones. As such, the same model of determining effectiveness cannot be used for non-voice messages sent to mobile devices.
Thus, a method and system of analyzing an advertisement delivered to a wireless device to determine whether the advertisement produced an intended result (e.g., the mobile user actually patronized the store to which the advertisement related) is needed.
In a first aspect of the invention there is a method for analyzing an advertisement received by a mobile communications device, comprising the steps of automatically monitoring the device""s geographic location subsequent to receiving advertising data, and writing success information to a database when, within a predetermined amount of time, the mobile device enters a geographic location corresponding to a business with which the advertising data is associated.
In other aspects the invention is embodied in one ore more data processing devices and as computer readable instructions stored on a computer readable medium.
In some embodiments of the invention, locational data is provided via global positioning system.
In some embodiments, the geographic location associated with the business is a store.
In some embodiments, the advertisement is considered to have failed when the mobile unit does not enter the geographic location within the predetermined amount of time.
In some embodiments, the advertisement is considered to have failed when the mobile unit moves to a distance from the geographic location greater than a predetermined distance.
In some embodiments, purchase information is written to the database when a user associated with the mobile device makes a purchase at the store.